


Scenario 12

by rideswraptors



Series: Kastle Scenarios [12]
Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Graphic Sex, see first part for warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 21:24:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16227617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rideswraptors/pseuds/rideswraptors
Summary: Frank has been cleaning up Murdock’s Karen-related messes for some time now. It’s no different when Karen finds out he’s alive.





	Scenario 12

They argue.

 

A lot.

 

Their ragtag crew of superheroes weren’t expecting that. Not from Karen Page and Matt Murdock who were once an almost something, who touched each other with kid gloves, and avoided talking about anything real. But Karen couldn’t let go of the lying. Couldn’t let go of his disappearance, of the fact that he’d gone back to being Daredevil without so much as a “Hey, I’m alive, my bad for...everything?”

 

Nope. She’d found out from Jess he was back. He was okay. He was in the city. He was working again. So yeah, they were arguing every chance they got. Matt treated her like a defiant child who was too precious to be tarnished. And it infuriated her. 

 

He’d come to the office, with yet another lecture about how she was supposed to be living her life. How she should write about something else, keep her head down, stay away from vigilantes like him. Even though  _ he _ was the one who continuously popped up in her life. Even though she hadn’t asked for any of it, much less desired to be in the middle of it. But none of that mattered in the least to Saint Daredevil. 

 

Karen sighed, slumping against the inside of her door when she got home. She was starting to sound like Frank. Not that she would ever tell him that because it would be the worst day of her ego’s life. At that, her brain quickly registered that water was running in her apartment. And that it smelled like cooking. Good cooking. Which was weird. There were white roses on the table. She cast a glance to the floor immediately to her right. Work boots. Damn. Feeling put upon and pre-annoyed, she set down her things, and went right into the bathroom. 

 

He didn’t notice her at first, which said something about their dynamic now, she thought. Karen leaned against the doorway, arms folded, and watched as Frank Castle drew her a bath and lit candles around it. 

 

“You’re late,” he informed her lightly, not bothering to look back at her. Since they didn’t have an appointment set or a date or anything planned at all, she snorted. 

 

“Traffic,” was her lame excuse.

 

“Liar.”

 

That much, he was right about. One, because she’d walked and there was no traffic for her to get caught in. Two, because Matt was the cause of her delay. She’d been so frustrated that she’d stayed late to finish writing her latest story until her fingers ached from typing. Another Fisk expose. Mostly Frank’s idea, but she’d agreed to it. Their plan was ill-advised on a good day, but they both wanted the damn thing settled. 

 

“Jones called,” he explained, deciding now was a good time to make eye contact. The hard lines of his face had softened since he’d killed Billy Rawlins. He wasn’t...peaceful, per se, but calmer. More still. Even graced her with real smiles on occasion; ones that weren’t hollow or mocking or full of rueful derision. She liked his smile. Liked his laugh, too. But she could tell that he was in no laughing mood. Despite the extra attentiveness, he wouldn’t be smiling at her. She reached to smooth away his worry lines, and he caught her hand to kiss it. 

 

“Matt’s an asshole.” 

 

His lip quirked quick at her lame offering. But he waited. With a heavy sigh, she stepped out of her heels and started to get undressed. If she was going to go through the whole damn thing, she would be comfortable. Frank watched her with the forced blandness that came from intimacy and controlling himself until the opportune moment. Didn’t stop him from reaching for her to kiss her properly though. Karen kissed back, grateful to be home, to have him home in one piece, to know that she didn’t have to deal with Matt alone. 

 

She slid into the tub, moaning in appreciation at the warmth, and started talking. He sat on the end and listened to it from start to finish. He started rubbing her feet when she got overly excited, gesturing broadly in her anger and splashing more water than necessary. Frank pulled faces several times during her tirade, but made few to no comments. Those he did make were one-worded and encouraging her to continue. Karen knew his thoughts about Matt Murdock anyway, so his silence hardly mattered. 

 

“He told me to stop going after Fisk.”

 

Frank grunted. 

 

“He said that I was going to get myself killed. That I didn’t know what I was doing. And that even if I did succeed, he might not be able to protect me.” Frank met her eyes at that one, unimpressed. “That’s what I said,” she told him incredulously. Karen carried a .038, knew how to use it, and was sleeping with the Punisher. She wasn’t an idiot, but she definitely wasn’t defenseless. 

 

“So he..?” 

 

“Laughed and told me he knew about you.” She bit her lip and shrugged. “About you’n me.” Frank let his eyes linger on her before dropping them back to her feet. 

 

“Bout time.” 

 

For whatever stupid fucking reason, that made her laugh. Of all the goddamn things to say! Frank wasn’t an idiot; he knew Matt had meant to accuse her of something. But leave it to him to infantilize the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. When she settled, she turned, pulling her feet away, and reached for his arm to hold.

 

“Jess let slip about your  _ dates _ last night, I guess.” 

 

Frank scowled at her. The only one of the Defenders he actually liked was Jessica Jones. She was good at her job and effective, when she was sober. He was training her in a more militant fashion, to get some control, fight without having to use her strength. Jess said it was actually helping a little, giving her some focus and clarity. Karen had started teasing him about it, how he planned and prepared for it, trying to logic his way through some of her more difficult physical issues. So Karen called them dates. Frank still refused to acknowledge her existence if she was drunk, but it was progress. Progress that Karen liked. 

 

“Yeah, well, he’s still a dumbfuck.” 

 

“You did change your signature. And he did think you were dead for a while. And there was that good chunk of time when you were out on your ass…” She flashed him a pretty smile at that. Frank had done  _ a lot  _ of groveling when he returned from the dead. Like, more than necessary. Karen had a bit of a meltdown after they’d gotten together about being a Maria replacement, and had, quite hysterically, thrown him out on several occasions without much of an explanation. Frank had been none too pleased with that behavior. He tugged on one of her toes, accepting the silent, sheepish apology for what it was. No matter how Matt treated her, Karen was decidedly not perfect. She knew it and Frank knew it, too. He’d raged at her that she was too fucking stubborn for her own good and a bit of a hypocrite, considering she was the one who’d told him he could have an After. Still. 

 

He shook his head, smirking. “Thought he woulda smelled me all over you or something.” 

 

That pulled a giggle and she splashed water at him. “You’re not a  _ dog _ .” 

 

“Not what he says.” 

 

“I don’t give a shit what he says.” She shoved more water at him. “And he does  _ not _ say that.” 

 

“He would.”

 

She wrinkled her nose at him. “I wouldn’t let him.” 

 

His eyes burned into her. Not numb like they’d once been. Not devoid of feeling like that court reporter had written. Just dark and hot and watching her. Karen got to her knees in the tub, not caring that the water sloshed, and moved forward to kiss him, bracing her hands on the side of the tub, teasing him open with her tongue. 

 

“C’mon,” she said against his lips, “you need to feed me.” 

 

Without fully understanding how it happened, Karen found herself in Frank’s arms, legs around his waist, hands clutching his shoulders. She screeched at the rapid succession of sensations, hot to cold, low to high, water to  _ Frank _ . He let her down long enough to put a robe on, but that was it. He’d kissed her neck and told her clothes weren’t exactly necessary before going to put their dinner together. Karen threw on her robe with a shiver before joining him. 

 

He’d made pasta puttanesca, something she ordered from their regular Italian place, and poured her some cheap table wine. He didn’t drink, but she definitely did. Whatever thoughts Karen had about partaking in a normal dinner with heated discussions of her stories, their general safety, and Frank’s occasional late night excursions, went right out the window when he pulled her onto his lap so that they were essentially eating from one plate. 

 

Logically, Karen knew he got this way sometimes. Handsy, needy, clingy, stupidly romantic in his own haphazard fashion. It was never a forced thing, never overtly planned, but it happened sometimes. He told her that before the kids, Maria had always complained he wasn’t romantic enough, and that after the kids, they planned out elaborate date nights whenever he was home from a tour. It made Karen incredibly happy to know that he’d put effort into making sure Maria got the whole of his attention every once in a while. She had a feeling they would have gotten along, and she deserved to know how much she’d been loved. Well, to know in a way that didn’t include guns and blood and multiple homicides. Karen never said those things out loud, she kept them for herself, but she instinctively knew that her silent inclusion of Maria into their lives was one of the reasons they worked so well. Karen didn’t try to compete with the memory of a dead woman, and Frank didn’t try to make her. 

 

So he fed her and she teased him, and their conversation was minimal between food and slow kisses. They ended up in bed together, like they always did, after he made her leave the dishes for later. Energy swinging back and forth between loving and frantic, both of them grappling for a better hold, a deeper pull, a longer moment. Karen loved sex with Frank. She hadn’t always enjoyed sex, as her past experiences had been less than phenomenal on many counts. But with Frank? Easy as breathing. Their first time had been quick; a fast, raw, life-affirming fuck that sent them both over the edge before they were ready. Every time after, they came together like it would be the last time. Frank wasn’t sure Karen could accept that he would keep being the Punisher, and Karen wasn’t sure Frank could accept another woman in Maria’s place. They were both incredibly, incredibly wrong. Misguided, too, in their urgency to protect one another. They’d had pretty amazing sex after making up from that blowout, too. 

 

That night, Frank was overly attentive, lavishing affection on every square inch of her as she shuddered under him. In a rare move, Karen let him pull her on top. Usually, she liked his heavy weight on top of her, liked to be dominated a little. But every once in a great while, she would ride him, as it was Frank’s intention to wear her out. Get her mind off things. When she crashed down from her own height, Frank wrested back control, flipping her onto her back and screwing her senseless. Karen just spread her legs and let him work, squeezing her muscles intermittently to make him growl and send shivers down her spine. She gripped him so tight with her hands that her nails left indents and spots of blood. 

 

He pumped into her a few more times before letting out a vicious snarl and rocking over her to chase his own end. Then he dropped to the bed, rolling so that he didn’t crush her, and pulled her up against him like a body pillow. Karen sighed and flipped her hair over him so it wasn’t on her neck while she cooled down. 

 

Karen, for one, was thrilled to death that Frank was the quiet kind after sex. She liked to linger in the afterglow, and not get too caught up in her thought processes. They’d laid there together for hours after that first time, just holding each other, hands lazily stroking bare skin. Blessedly silent. And she still liked it. Still liked that Frank would let her stay in that space, and that he’d stay there with her, totally unassuming and unpressured. 

 

“He’s just mad, you know,” Frank said quietly after a little while. It took Karen’s brain a few minutes to catch up to the fact that he was talking. She twisted herself so that she could look up at him, while his fingers idly danced over the curve of her shoulder. She lifted a brow in silent question. “Yeah,” he answered, breathily, “mad he can’t have you.” She snorted in response and settled more firmly against him, pressing kisses to his chest and nuzzling there. 

 

“Laugh all you want. It’s true. You’re the life he can’t have.” 

 

She wrapped a leg around his. “M’not a prize.” 

 

“No,” he confirmed. “You’re not. And that’s why you’re here with me instead of with him.” 

 

Karen sat up at that, looking down at him incredulously, even as he watched her with hooded eyes, fingertips at her hipbone. She lifted her eyes at him pointedly. 

 

“We’re gonna have a fight about that comment later.”

 

He tugged her down. “Looking forward to it.” He wrapped an arm around the small of her back, bracing her to him as she kissed him eagerly. Fuck him for thinking so little of himself. She was about to straddle his hips, rev him up, when his phone on the nightstand started ringing. Luckily, she was on top, so her hand got there faster. And she knew that damn number. 

 

Karen sat up with a faux-outraged gasp, eyes accusing. Frank clapped a hand over his eyes and pushed it through his hair, utterly defeated. Karen hit the green and pulled a face at him.

 

“Go for Pete,” she chirped in the perkiest voice she could muster. The man on the other end of line cackled uproariously, even as Frank rumbled underneath her, pretending like she wasn’t hilarious. 

 

“ _ I told that cocksucker it wasn’t gonna work _ ,  _ my liege, _ ” David Liberman laughed. 

 

“That’s because you have uncommonly good sense, David.” She pulled the phone back, pretending to cover the speaker. “I can’t  _ buh-lieve _ you tried to butter me up,  _ Peter _ ,” she exclaimed in a near-falsetto. From the roll of his eyes he wasn’t buying it. “Bath, dinner, sex, all to go hunting--”

 

“ _ Wait, bath? Tell me-- _ ”

 

Karen didn’t bother listening to the rest of that question. “David,” she said, trailing fingers down Frank’s chest, “he will call you back in exactly ten minutes.” She didn’t wait for a response, just hung up and tossed the phone to the end of the bed. “Which means you have seven,” she informed him, getting on her knees. With a wolfish grin, he slid his big body so that his mouth was positioned right under her.

 

*

 

“Where?”

 

“Docks. Just a lead. 50/50. I’ll have something for you tomorrow.” 

 

“Text me?”

 

“Soon as the last body drops. Two hours, tops.” 

 

“Got the mask?”

 

“Yes, I’ve got the mask. Don’t fuss.”

 

“I’ll fuss all I like, thanks.” 

 

He fastened the last bit of his vest, pulled on his jacket, and bent over the bed to kiss her thoroughly one more time. 

 

“Lunch tomorrow?” 

 

“No coffee?” she pouted.

 

He shrugged. “Morning job in Midtown. Done by 12:30.” 

 

She kissed him again. “Kay. Be careful.” 

 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
